Mistakenly assuming that the company had purchased its way to market leadership, eBay’s executives committed a series of strategic errors, ones they might have avoided if they had realized the threat Taobao actually presented. For example, eBay was slow to offer an integrated payment solution, and it insisted on charging customers significant transaction fees. Had its network advantage been real, the model would have made sense—the company with the strongest network effects can typically get away with higher charges (or lower quality). But eBay was not dominant in the emerging consumer market—the mutual attraction between fashionistas and techies was weak—and so its model didn’t fly. In 2006 eBay shut down its business in China.